Make employees care about cyber security with this 10 tips

02 Feb Make employees care about cyber security with this 10 tips

Did you know your employees are your best assets, and you need to invest in them continually? If you did not know, now you know. Get them patched frequently, else you’re always going to have vulnerabilities. Even in a company with one employee or thousands, it’s worth training them as opposed to taking on the risk of a breach and this is because they represent a large potential attack surface in every organization. Take it from Techinnovar.

Here are 10 tips for best cyber risk practice for all employers.

Perform “baptism by fire” training exercises

The best training today is “baptism by fire” training, in which the users undergo a simulated attack specific to their job, I would say.

Let them become a victim to an attack that’s arranged by a security department or an outside cybersecurity company, and then they’re asked to understand the lessons they’ve learned from that attack, and the implications on the business, on their personal lives and how they could have prevented it. And then they’re asked to share that experience with their peer group through a report.

By performing regular phishing tests, in which the IT team sends out a fake phishing email to all employees across the organization, and gauge how many people click on it. Then, they can break that data down by departments and types of messages, to tailor training to problem areas. It also allows the company to show progression.

Top management involvement.

The IT team need to make the rest of the team aware of the ramifications of a potential breach. Typically, to have a good cyber plan, you have to have a lined item in the budget for people, hardware, or software, year after year. That means getting the CFO, and CEO of the company involved.

Start cyber awareness training for every new employee

Every first-time employee joins the company, start building the mindset as all new hires go through security training from day one. That way they learn from day 1 that cybersecurity is important and that they are going to get continuous training.

Frequent system evaluations

Make a timetabled plan for performance evaluations of both employees and systems to find out how vulnerable your organization is to attack. Until you do that, you won’t know how bad or good your security posture may be. Like we say here at Techinnovar, we detect to protect!

Communication flow

Create a good communication culture for cybersecurity information to all employees, to get all departments on board with training and learning best practices. This will help break down the topic creating alignment, and this helps people work on it together.

Have a handy formal plan

IT teams should develop a formal, documented plan for cybersecurity training that is reviewed and updated often with the latest information on attack vectors and other risks that are bound to occur.

Appoint cybersecurity culture ambassadors.

Tech leaders should appoint a cybersecurity culture ambassador in every department at their organization. These representatives can act as an extension of the IT team and keep employees trained and motivated. That’s something that’s often overlooked—use the resources you already have in the company beyond the IT team.

8. Training, training and more training

Do not shy away from Cybersecurity training. You should make it a continuous process throughout the year, at all levels of the organization, specific to each employee. If you’re an end user, there must be training associated with the types of attacks you might receive—for example, attacks on your email or attacks that are oriented on the type of job you hold. If you’re in IT, the attacks may be more technical in nature in terms of the attacks you might be seeing.

Insist on the importance of security both at work and at home.

IT teams should help employees appreciate the importance of cyber hygiene not just in the workplace, but also at home. Teach users about privacy, security, and how the lessons learned at work can apply at home and in their personal lives to give them a ‘what’s in it for me’ they can apply all the time, not just at work.

Reward employees

Make it a fun-fair by rewarding employees that find malicious emails and share stories about how users helped thwart security issues. IT leaders should also empathize with employees who make mistakes: Many employees send or receive hundreds of emails per day, so asking them to avoid one of those can be difficult.

While these training tips can help, education is not a permanent solution but, just one aspect of defending the environment from advanced attacks.

Stay up to date on all the latest cybersecurity threats. Click here to subscribe to the Techinnovar newsletter.